How does voter suppression occur in NC? What are the mechanics used?
I am out of my element here. I can only give you what I've noticed and my impressions having lived here for three years. I live in a retirement enclave and don't mix much outside it and, at my age, am disinclined to get into the workings of a new state, so I may not have all the details or the terminology.
Apparently, NC was one of a bunch of Southern states that were put into a special category by the Voting Rights Act where they had to get approval for any changes that affect voting. NC was just recently, somewhere in this decade, I think, relieved of that and has apparently gotten busy big time making changes. Even though I pay little attention to local news I have seen story after story.
The focus on limiting early voting and Sunday voting represents the newest effort to disenfranchise minorities in North Carolina. As media outlets have noted, “This isn’t the first time that the North Carolina Republican Party has been criticized for voter suppression this election year.” The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit reaffirmed the racial dimension of these attacks on voting rights when it struck down the North Carolina voter ID law, referred to as a “monster” law, because it “agreed with allegations that North Carolina’s omnibus bill selectively chose voter-ID requirements, reduced the number of early-voting days and changed registration procedures in ways meant to harm blacks.” In that case, as I posted, NC admitted in court seeking information about racial composition to deliberately target blacks. The state is under some court order or other to fix the extreme gerrymandering. I know that's not unique to NC or to R's. I have no way to assess what's outside the lines of commonly accepted practice but I know that the court has said NC is and one look at the weird shape of districts suggests that this is coloring outside the lines. The state, I think, has already come up with corrections for that but they weren't in effect yet for this election.
As for voter-ID and the like, I was surprised when I moved here how flexible they were compared to Virginia. I have always stood in line on election day and voted. If Virginia had early voting, I didn't know about it. Neither state required ID. And I always thought that absentee ballots require an excuse but here all you have to do is ask. My impression is that here everybody and his dog votes absentee or early. There was no line at my polling station either time I voted. I did see on the news, though, that there were frightfully long lines in some places and the people in line had skin darker than mine.
When I have heard about states accused of voter suppression, I have scratched my head. Everybody has ID's after all. My 99 year old aunt in Arizona who never drove a car has one. OTOH, there were six bus routes within a few blocks of my condo in Arlington. When I was evaluating CCRC's, one of the things I looked for was bus access because I figured there would come a time when I couldn't drive. My aunt's community has excellent bus service at the front door. So I googled and called to try to find where I could go from here via bus only to find that there is no bus service. I don't know how a poor person would get to a polling place or a DMV to get an ID or whatever. And, of course, a poor working person isn't in a position to cut out for a few hours of the workday to vote. You'd have to be awfully motivated to vote to go through the expense and trouble. I rather expected to see something in the news about special services to get folks ID's but I heard nothing. I would have been willing to drive people to the pools or the DMV had I heard a call for such. I admit to not going out of my way to actively seek out such an opportunity.
Another indicator of what's going on is the election for governor. The Democratic lieutenant governor beat the incumbent Republican in a close race that the incumbent didn't concede for a month of searching for voter fraud. Didn't find anything. There were a few votes here and there. One of the things they looked for was whether anyone who had voted early had subsequently died before election day. That's really small potatoes. If they have to resort to that, it would seem that what I have read about voter fraud being mostly a myth may well be so and there's really no justification for imposing hardships on potential voters who have enough challenges in life already. If fraud isn't a significant problem, then maybe these calls for more stringent standards really are intended as voter suppression.
Further info on the business of the governorship changing hands, the R's went right to work to hobble the incoming governor. A couple of items. They changed the rules for judgeships to list party on the ballot. In addition to a D governor, NC now has a D majority on the supreme court. When I was considering my vote, I noticed that party was not identified but one of the two candidates was black, so assumed D. Maybe not enough R's looked at the picture and the voted for the "wrong" guy so the party wants to make sure that doesn't happen again. There was also proposed legislation, don't know if it happened or not, to add two more judges to the supreme court, positions that would be filled by the outgoing R governor, so that the court would lose that newly won D majority before ever having had the opportunity to effect it.. One more item in that package--they changed the rules for election monitors. They have three, two from one party and one from the other. I don't know what the scheme was before but they changed it so that the R's and D's would alternate wrt who had the two, with the R's having the two in even number years, aka all the years with elections.
Kate, I am not a D nor do I lean D but, between that crap and the bathroom bill, I made a point to vote D for all the NC executive and legislative positions and for the supreme court. I don't typically vote every line item on the ballot and only vote where I know enough about a particular position and it's candidates to make a good choice. Without all that provocation, I most likely would not have voted for state officials at all. Well, "that crap" was enough knowledge for me. There needs to be some balance.
Are they trying to suppress the black voter? Poor voters?
WRT the targeted voters, I don't have enough feel for the state to assess that. Could be black or poor. Could be simply D. Or black and poor as a proxy for D. Or D as a proxy for black and poor. As I mentioned, I don't get out into the broader community other than to shop and to eat. I have noticed that this is a very friendly place, at least as compared to back home. People are chatty. You routinely stand in an aisle in the drugstore looking over the products and end up talking to someone else nearby doing the same thing. In queues for cashiers or restaurants. Going in and out doors. People hold doors, say a few words, even just passing on street. I have gotten no vibes at all that any of these people care a hoot about what race anyone is. So, if there's racial hostility, it manifests elsewhere. The party aggression, OTOH, is evident. |
